Authentic voices. Remarkable stories. AOL On Originals showcase the passions that make the world a more interesting place.

EMMY NOMINATED SERIES directed by and starring Steve Buscemi is back for a second season!!! Park Bench is a local's take on the special people, places, and spirit of New York City. Through unscripted moments with average New Yorkers and Steve's celeb friends, Buscemi takes viewers on a funny, first-hand journey/misadventure, told in his unique voice.

Journey to the Draft is an organic, unscripted, docu-series that follows three college football players, all with promising professional careers. These young men attend different schools across the country and play a variety of positions on the field, but at the end of the day they share one goal:to play in the NFL. The AOL docu-series follows players Leonard Williams, Kevin White and Marcus Peters.

Connected features the personal stories of six New Yorkers woven together into one of the most intimate series ever. This groundbreaking show changes the nature of storytelling by giving each character a camera to document their lives. The result is a unique format revealing as different as everyone appears to be, we are all universally Connected.

Wake up to your world in 2 minutes.

"Stricly Come Dancing presenter Tess Daly and The Saturdays' Rochelle Humes talk to mums about their experiences of being mum. Whether the daughter of a Rolling Stone, in one of the most famous girl bands the world has ever known, or a parent coping with disability as well as family life, each mother in Being Mum shows that the feelings, challenges and rewards of motherhood are universal no matter the surroundings you find yourself in."

Jews and Money. Asian Drivers. Polish IQ. CPT… that's racist! But where do these stereotypes come from? Comedian Mike Epps explores the backstories of this humor and how history and fact often distorts into a snide – but sometimes funny – shorthand.

"INSPIRED" features celebrities, visionaries and some of the biggest newsmakers of our generation, recounting the stories behind their biggest, life-changing moments of inspiration.

In a compelling series of verite encounters, Win Win provides unique access into the minds and lives of the world’s most-celebrated entrepreneurs and athletes.

Explore what it means to be human as we rush head first into the future through the eyes, creativity, and mind of Tiffany Shlain, acclaimed filmmaker and speaker, founder of The Webby Awards, mother, constant pusher of boundaries and one of Newsweek’s “women shaping the 21st Century.”

Nicole Richie brings her unfiltered sense of humor and unique perspective to life in a new series based on her irreverent twitter feed. The show follows the outspoken celebrity as she shares her perspective on style, parenting, relationships and her journey to adulthood.

Comedy is hard, but teaching comedy to children is hilariously difficult. Kevin Nealon is giving the challenge to some world-famous comedians. As these young minds meet with comedy’s best, get ready to learn some valuable comedy lessons, and to laugh!

James Franco loves movies. He loves watching them, acting in them, directing them, and even writing them. And now, he’s going to take some of his favorite movie scenes from the most famous films of all time, and re-imagine them in ways that only James can.

The story of punk rock singer Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! who came out as a woman in 2012, and other members of the trans community whose experiences are woefully underrepresented and misunderstood in the media.

Dave: Hey, how’s are you doing? This is Cooking with Dave. I’m Dave. I’m the world’s greatest chef to all of you. Today, I’m cooking some Hoppin John for New Year’s Day to go along with my ham. You know on New Year’s Day here in the South, I think it’s the South, some places down there maybe black eyed peas would supposed to bring a good look in the New Year. Well, a tradition of ours would always have Hoppin John’s, collard greens, and your ham are great on New Year’s Day and the greens are supposed to be going bit to—with New Year would bring you the money and the black eyed peas and the rice to Hoppin John I supposed would bring you good look from here. So you always have Hoppin John’s and collard greens, some kind of greens on New Years Day along with some meat and whatever as long as there’s some meat I think it will work. I like the ham because we have the turkey you know for Thanksgiving, sometimes we have a turnkey for Christmas and then change that a little bit and have ham for New Year’s Day. You got to like the ham, it’s a good stuff. Anyway Hoppin’ John, nobody feels black eyed peas, I’m using dry black eyed peas today. I soaked them in water about four hours, we’ll soak that a little bit and then I’ll cook them. Now, if you don’t want to use dry black eyed peas you don’t have to. You can use canned black eyed peas. Just take a can of black eyed peas, cook in the same way that I cook them using the garlic you know get that flavor go along and a little ham too, little chicken broth and if you use canned black eyed peas, just don’t cook them this long. You know, just get them going into flavors and then cook them about 15 minutes and you’re done, they’re ready to go. They’ll taste just as good. Canned and dry, frozen, whatever you want to use is fine for this recipe. I’ve set for you a dry beans because it’s cheaper. You can get a bag for a dollar, you get the can for about, you know they’re cheaper—and also it’s easier to get the flavor in a dry bean because it soaks up the flavor as they’ve been soaking up. Sorry, food with cans have cumbersome flavor. But you can add some more flavor to with some onions and some garlic and then we go hot stuffs and you know some ham with chicken broth and then we’re good. I love the Hopin John. So you’re writing that. All right let me show you how we do it. Here’s our pan, I put a little olive oil down in the pan. We’re going to put a whole chopped onion and a little olive oil, we’re going to split it out, we’re going to put about 3 tablespoons of minced garlic right in there. We’re going to stir that up and get with the sautéing with those onions, sauté where they are translucent a little bit, putting out those flavors onion and garlic. Good base for our black eyed peas which is the most important thing over our Hoppin John is this black eyed peas. Black eyed pea taste good and everything else tastes good too. We’ll salt and pepper, we’re going to salt some more later, just put a little salt and pepper in there and then we’ll salt it to taste that as we go. And if we get these things sauté in a little bit then we’re going to go ahead and put some ham in it. Put some ham, cube that up in ham bits, we’d use the flavor in our black eyed peas. This would be good. You know it would be good. And then we’ll be putting the ham bone up, that was the bone with in the ham. Put the ham bone in there, why not, it gives little flavor. We’ll mix that all up in there with the onions and the garlic. Everyone so you could add some pepper just right now. If you want to, you could put a little heat in it. If you want to you could add some chili powder or a hot sauce in if you want and if you’re hot—whatever this was the basics of our black eyed peas. Now I took some black eyed peas and I’ve soaked them for about 4 hours in water and I changed the water out and I’m taking the black eyed peas and put them right in here like a soup and now if I need to put anymore liquid in here I’ll come back and put some chicken stock in it. But I’m going ahead and just cook this slow, I’m going to simmer them with the ham and the onions and the garlic, salt and pepper up in there for a little while. Just simmer them and when I need to I’ll come back and I’ll add chicken broth and maybe little salt and pepper if I need to and just cook them slowly on a medium heat, just enough to simmer until they’re tender and juicy and ready to eat. Got to leave yourself some black eyed peas and the best thing about black eyed peas, they’re actually good for you and you can almost, you get all you want. All right, so I would put the lid on it and let it go, let it simmer I think about an hour and a half, 2 hours, to get this things done and once they’re tender and not crunchy anymore, put them on some rice and call it Hoppin John. All right, here we go back at our Hoppin John’s, I cook the Hoppin John’s for about—the black eyes peas here, I’ve been cooking them about an hour and a half, just simmer them nice and slow, stir them once in a while. I tasted them here and there, add little salt and pepper as I needed to and they are wonderful. It taste good with the onions and garlic and little ham bits in them. We’ll put them on a rice and call them Hoppin John’s right next to our ham and some collard greens. All right, we’re going to get this on a plate. We’re going to put a little bit of rice on the plate, then we’ll take our Hoppin John’s, black eyed peas with some ham and put that around on top of the rice and then what we’re going to do, we’ll put the juice and there is what we call Hoppin John’s. We’re going to set our Hoppin John, we’re going to put a little collard green beside the Hopin John. We can put a couple of nice pieces of ham right next to it and we call that New Years—complete it with some—cannot beat it, Hoppin John’s collard green, and a ham. Al right, there we go, that’s how we fix our Hoppin John. You’ll get to love them I’m telling you. It’s wonderful. You can use any kind of rice that you want. Use brown rice, use white rice, use red rice, whatever kind of rice you like—fourth things and the black eyes peas and, little ham, flavored with the onions and the garlic, man you’re going to love it. They’re good, they’re good for you. You can’t beat collard greens and the thing they do for you. I have collard green menu all you have to do is you’re going to watch it but be sure you have the collard greens that I have. All right, cook the Hoppin John, you already have one today. Thanks.